


A Serial Killer

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Multi, Reference to Incest, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 22:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8771083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Written for Sentinel Thursday prompt 'street'





	

A Serial Killer

by Bluewolf

When the fourth body was found, the case was moved from Homicide to Major Crime. It would probably have been earlier, possibly after the second, almost certainly the third, but for the fact that the dead women were all prostitutes.

Jim Ellison and his civilian observer, Blair Sandburg, joined Homicide detectives Laing and Proctor as they studied the body of the young victim.

Laing glanced up as Jim and Blair reached him. "Hi, Jim, Blair," he said.

"Alan," Blair said. "Denny."

"What have you got?" Jim asked.

"Whoever did this is carrying a lot of anger," Laing said. "You'll have been told that this is the fourth one, since the case has been handed to you?"

"Yes - though frankly I think it's a waste of time. I'd say that you have as much chance of solving the case as we do."

"One murder... left with us. Once TPTB have decided it's a serial killer, it becomes a major crime," Proctor said.

"Though I have to admit I'm surprised that they consider the serial killing of street girls a _major_ crime," Laing said dryly. "I know, I know, they're still lives, and a serial killer could move on and start killing other people too, but sometimes I think the guys in their high and mighty offices are only concerned with what the police can do for the rich of Cascade."

"You won't get any argument from me on that," Jim said. "The number of times the Mayor has insisted that a relatively minor crime be transferred to Major Crime because the victim is a friend of a friend... or even his daughter's boyfriend's dog's dogwalker's second cousin's mother-in-law's gardener. It's misuse of his position."

Laing chuckled. "It's surely not that bad."

"Sometimes we think it's worse," Jim growled. "What does Serena say about it?" He glanced over to where Serena Chang and two fellow Forensics personnel were comparing notes before he moved forward, the others following him, to look more closely at the body.

"Not much she can say," Laing replied. "Caused of death, multiple stab wounds, some of them inflicted post mortem. Faces all slashed. Semen on the bodies, but given they were all street girls, that's only to be expected."

"And since they'd all probably been with more than one man during the course of the evening, and they'd all have had different 'customers'... " Proctor added. "Pretty well impossible to use that to identify anyone. Though once he gets started, Dan might be able to find out more."

"She looks so damn young," Blair said, trying to see past the slashes that disfigured her face.

"Odds are she's underage," Laing said. "If we can manage to identify her - and usually we can't - there's a fair chance she's a runaway, and if life as a street girl is better than life at home... "

"Makes you wonder what life was like for them at home," Proctor finished.

" _Usually_ you can't identify a street girl?" Blair asked. "How often... ?"

"Too often. Death is an occupational hazard for them," Laing told him. "It's not an easy life. Even the sensible ones who insist that their johns use a condom aren't necessarily going to escape an STD - not many of them realize that giving a blowjob unprotected is just as likely to infect them with something. And there are always the violent guys who might claim they haven't been given value for their money and beat up the girl they hired. Or the ones who expect to get it free and react with violence when they're told no, and payment up front. Or the ones who wait till a girl has had a few customers then approach her, beat her up and rob her. If she can't give her pimp the amount of money he expects, *he* might well beat her up too, though in theory he should go after the guy who robbed her. It wouldn't be the first street girl who's been beaten to death by her pimp if she annoyed him. A girl who's been beaten to death... she's usually left not easy to identify.

"Okay, this one's been stabbed, like three earlier ones, so if - _if_ \- she's a runaway who's been reported missing, it might be possible to identify her, even with the slashed face. But if we ask the other girls for a name, you can be pretty sure it's not her real name; most of them take a street name and that's what the girls know each other by."

"And a lot of the time runaways aren't reported," Proctor added. "A girl being sexually abused by a stepfather or older stepbrother, or even her own father, whose mother is a bullied doormat - she runs away to escape. The abusers aren't going to report it - she could accuse them if she was found and explained to the police why she ran, why she doesn't want to go home; the mother won't because she's a victim too, who knows she'll be beaten up if she does... "

"Or if they are reported... " Laing took up the tale. "Say someone's gone missing in LA. That's where she's reported missing, where she's being looked for. But if she's managed to run to here... How can the LA Missing Persons unit track her down? Her own name is Jane Smith... but she adopts the street name Melody, maybe... oh, Melody Singer. How can she ever be tracked down?"

Slowly, Blair nodded.

"Boys, too," Proctor went on, "though there aren't quite as many of them."

"We saw some of that in Vice," Jim said, "any time we picked up someone for soliciting. The names they gave, sometimes... and you couldn't persuade them to give their real names. I remember one... from my very early days. He called himself Sexy Hunk, and we couldn't persuade him to give us any other name. I tried suggesting to him that his parents might be worried about him... and he laughed. 'All my Dad'll be worried about is losing a source of beer money,' he said. 'He began selling my ass to his friends when I was ten - every night - having first trained me by using me himself. And if I'm going to be fucked by several men every night, this way at least I'm getting the money, it's not going down the throat of a selfish bastard who's just using me as a source of income.' And when I mentioned his Mom, he said that his father had forced her onto the street not long after he was born, and if she took home less than $500 a night - whatever the weather - he beat her up. I suggested that if he told us where they lived we could arrest the man and rescue the woman. But he wouldn't. 'She could leave him,' he said. 'Especially now I'm away and he can't hold my safety over her head. But I heard from someone I trusted not to betray where I am, and he told me that she's still with him, still walking the streets to provide him with beer money... ' We couldn't keep Hunk off the street either - he said it was the only way he knew to earn enough money to give himself a home and food in his belly.

"A couple of months later he was found dead. Either the friend he trusted betrayed him, or his father managed somehow to track him down - but there were enough clues to let us arrest the father. All he would say was that his son was a selfish brat who had run away rather than work to put money into the household, and deserved to die. He never said how he'd found the kid."

Proctor sighed. "And occasionally they run away to get free of over-strict parents, then get trapped by a pimp and once they're into the lifestyle it's hard to get out... I don't say there aren't any, but I don't think I've ever heard of a prostitute who's in the job from choice. And a lot of them end up on drugs because it's the only way to make the life bearable. You'll hear people muttering that they go on the street to feed the habit, but so often it's the other way."

***

The call from Dan Wolfe came late that afternoon, and Jim and Blair went down to the morgue to see him.

"We've got a match on semen from all the bodies," he said. "I was fairly sure before this last one, but I have no doubt now. All your victims had been with several different men, but one semen sample is the same from each. So if you can catch him, we've got DNA proof."

"Wasn't all the semen mixed?" Blair asked.

"You'd expect it, wouldn't you? But sometimes a man will pull out at the last moment and shoot his semen over the woman, when it's a pro. That way... I suppose the guy's telling himself that he's not really being unfaithful to his wife, it's the equivalent of masturbating. This one that's the match has done it every time... and in a way that almost ensures that his won't mix with anyone else's."

"Seems a bit odd," Blair muttered. Nothing in his anthropology experience fitted that particular scenario.

"Unfortunately DNA alone isn't going to help us catch him," Jim said grimly.

"We're going to have to do some patrolling?" Blair asked.

"Yes. With the near certainty that wherever we are, he isn't."

***

After a word with Simon, they went home, had a quick meal and went to bed for an hour, early though it was; they wanted to be fully alert when they went out that night. Jim slept easily - he had learned in the army how to grab a quick snooze any time the opportunity arose. Blair merely dozed - he was too used to working until he was too exhausted to stay awake. At least it was the summer break, so he didn't have to ask anyone to take his classes while he accompanied Jim on what they were both pretty sure would be waste of time patrolling of the streets where working girls - and sometimes boys - plied their trade, in the hope of catching whoever it was doing the killing.

Absolutely the only thing they had going for them was the surety that the killer wasn't taking his victims to a hotel room; and so Blair drove while Jim directed his attention down the back alleys where a man might go to have a degree of privacy.

Dan had said the victims were all killed around 10 - 11 pm, so they drove around from 9 until midnight, and saw nothing either considered at all suspicious. They went back to the loft and returned to bed.

***

Things continued like that for several days; and then one night just after 9, they saw one of the working girls going into an alley with another, well-dressed woman.

Well, that was unusual - a woman employing a female prostitute?

They glanced at each other, then Blair quietly stopped the Volvo - they had taken to alternating vehicles to avoid being too obvious - and they got out and quietly walked back to the alley, Jim's hearing focused on it - it was still full daylight, so they could both see perfectly easily. But even Blair heard the pain-filled cry that came from the alley.

They broke into a run, turned into the alley and found the well-dressed woman about to stab the working girl for what they knew had to be the second time.

"Cascade Police! Freeze!" Jim had already pulled his gun.

The woman took a step back, looking around as if for an escape route, then her lunge to use her victim as a shield was blocked by Blair, who simply pushed her away, then dropped to his knees beside the already injured prostitute as she fell.

With the attacking woman off-balance, it was easy for Jim to grab her, swing her around and handcuff her. Jim then pulled a latex glove out of his pocket and lifted the knife, wrapping the glove carefully around the handle before placing it carefully on the ground. He took another glove from his pocket, put it on, then patted down his captive.

Feeling something hard, he pushed his hand into the pocket and pulled out a small glass bottle, partly filled with a liquid substance. Keeping his eyes unswervingly on his captive, he used thumb and forefinger to unscrew the top and sniffed the contents.

Semen.

As he screwed the top on again he became aware of the distant sound of a siren rapidly coming closer. Moments later a vehicle screeched to an abrupt halt at the entrance to the alley, a car door slammed and they were joined by two patrol cops.

He grinned at them. "That was fast, guys." He pushed his captive towards  them. "Take her in, will you? The initial charge is attempted murder, with the suspicion that she has killed at least four other women. Oh, I didn't mirandize her, so you'd better do that too, please."

"Right, Detective, we'll do that. Do you have a name for her?"

"No - even without being told she has the right to remain silent, she's been using that right."

"Okay."

The patrol cops marched her to their car, put her in the back and drove off.

Having watched the presumed killer taken away, Jim joined Blair, who was pressing his T-shirt against the injured girl's wound, even as he spoke reassuringly to her.

"How are you feeling?" he asked softly.

"Hurts," she whispered. "Was that... was that the person who killed Beauty and... and... "

"We think so," Jim said. "Will you give us your name? Your own name, not your street one?"

She hesitated. "This'll be in the papers, won't it? If I give you my real name... If I do, it'll let my father know where I am. Please, I can't let him find me."

"Was he selling you to his friends?" Jim asked, his voice very gentle.

"No... It was just him... After my Mom died, he said it was my duty to take her place... but he was my Dad, and even then I knew it was wrong... so when I got the chance I ran away, but I'd been his... his slut for nearly three years by then. It took me that long to trick him into thinking I was resigned to... to... I want to get out of this life, but there's nothing else where I know what to do."

Jim and Blair glanced at each other. The girl couldn't have been more than sixteen, or maybe seventeen.

"I can arrange for you to get help," Blair said quietly. "I know, unskilled jobs don't pay that much, but in the right job you can learn the skills you need to be promoted, earn more."

"Give us both names," Jim suggested. "We can use your street name to prosecute, and Blair can use your real name to get you help."

"I... My own name is Donna Walsh. On the street... I use the name Sweet Chocolate."

And then an ambulance drove up and parked at the end of the alley. The paramedics ran in - it was still just light enough for them to see. They took over quickly, one of them saying, "Sorry we've been so long, it's been a busy night."

"Can I ride in with you?" Blair asked. "Jim, you'll need to get in to the station to check on our Jane Doe's booking, won't you?" Jim nodded. "I'll deal with Sweet's details at the hospital."

***

It was some time before Jim and Blair met up again. Blair got back to the loft nearly an hour before Jim joined him; by then it was nearly dawn. Although Blair was tired, he didn't want to go to bed before Jim got home - he wanted to know what had happened, and knew Jim would want to know about Sweet - about Donna.

"Get Donna settled all right?" Jim asked.

Blair nodded. "I got a little more out of her, once she was stitched up and settled in a room. They were able to do everything under a local - that first stab wound was meant to hurt, but not kill.

"Jim, she's still only fifteen - her mother died just a few days after her eleventh birthday. She hasn't been to school since then - her father moved them to another town, and pretty well kept her a prisoner - his own sex slave. I called Macy from Social Services - she came out even at that time of night - and introduced Donna to her, and Macy's promised to get her a foster mother - no men in the house - and a chance to get some more schooling. Donna... well, I left Macy with her and Donna was beginning to relax a bit, if only because here was someone who'd actually come out to see her in the middle of the night. It'll take a while before Donna really trusts anyone, but you could see that she was beginning to hope for a better future. Macy's promised to keep me in the picture. And actually it wouldn't surprise me if she ended up giving Donna a job - someone who'd been there, knew exactly what it was like...

"How did you get on?"

Jim sighed. "We still don't have a name for our Jane Doe, but she's definitely our killer. We hauled Dan out, and he did a quick check and confirmed the semen in the bottle was the same as the one found on all the dead girls. Eventually we got her to talk... at least enough to tell us why.

"The semen was - is - her husband's, collected from the tied-off condoms he'd used when he was with her. She'd discovered he'd been unfaithful with a young - an underage - prostitute, so she decided to be revenged on any underage street girl she could find, and splash his semen onto her victims so that he'd be blamed. It hadn't occurred to her that while the semen could be matched, the police couldn't use the info to identify the man it had come from."

"Not too bright, huh?"

"Too bitter about what he'd done to think past revenge, however misplaced. Anyway, I've got tomorrow - today, rather - off because I worked pretty well all night."

Blair nodded. "I won't be sorry to get to bed. So - a quick breakfast, then we get some sleep?"

"Sounds like a plan," Jim agreed.


End file.
